I have been watching anime for approximately six years now, and throughout this time I have gone through many phases of anime-watching from shoujo, romance, slice of life, and shounen, where it all begins. The shounen anime that I started off watching were Fairy Tail, Blue Exorcist, and Soul Eater. However, around 2017 to 2018, I stopped watching shounen anime, falling behind on many releases during this new wave of shounen including anime like Boku no Hero Academia (or My Hero Academia for you who like the English name), Demon Slayer, and Jujutsu Kaisen. However, during my time at Stevens, I have met many wonderful people who encouraged me to give these newer shounen anime a try. With the new Jujutsu Kaisen movie coming out later this year, I decided to give this anime a watch.
Now, another reason why I was hesitant to watch shounen anime is due to my experience with the genre. Many newer shounen anime feel predictable due to their various tropes, making them tiresome to watch. However, Jujutsu Kaisen does something that defies this, providing something new and unique to the genre.
What attracted me to Jujutsu Kaisen was that it caters very well to an experienced anime audience. The intense color palette, gruesome curses, monsters, and horror-inspired grotesque scenes filled with blood and wrinkly, veiny, and disturbing monsters help draw in older anime fans. This is unique in a shounen anime which seeks to not scare but be horror-esque.
Unfortunately, a defining characteristic of female characters in shounen anime are over-sexualization and underwhelming action scenes. In the case of Jujutsu Kaisen, while there is no sexualization of the female characters, the female characters’ value in the plot is still diminished. Jujutsu Kaisen does have powerful and admirable characters like Nobura and Miwa — however, this is only up to episode 15, and I haven’t finished the show, so my opinion may change. At no point are they sexualized, and Nobura feels like a real girl, albeit a wicked jujitsu sorcerer too.
However, there are some concerning characters. One character, Toji, who is physically aggressive, keeps asking men about their type of girls and destroys them if they are not similar to his tastes. I didn’t really enjoy these conversations, but I think it served to add to his character personality of being a jerk while also having no one to share his taste in girls.
The complicated but realistic characters are another benefit of the show. Rarely do you see shounen and shoujo anime being very realistic; however, I believe they can be fun and enjoyable either way. The fact that Jujutsu feels realistic is amazing in and of itself. Its ability to build realistic mood with complex characters makes us feel a world of our own.
What really distinguishes Jujutsu Kaisen from other shounen anime is how it conveys the morality of its characters. For those unfamiliar with shounen anime, they usually not only revolve around fighting and cool world building, but also around the beliefs of the characters influenced by their past experiences. For example, the backstory and morals of each character are incorporated in stories about their complicated pasts, which may span several arcs or episodes. On the other hand, Jujutsu Kaisen tells the story and beliefs of the characters up front, so you spend more time seeing them develop their personality from that backstory and challenge them to accept the hard truths of their world. In comparison to older shounen anime, Jujutsu Kaisen follows the new trend of following faster-paced backstories and deeper focus on character development.
All these interesting factors brought back to me my lost love for shounen anime. The excitement, the intrigue, and the connection I felt with the characters all made me appreciate this new generation of shounen anime. So if you want a realistic and gritty—but also insightful—version of a shounen anime, go watch Jujutsu Kaisen.
Courtesy of One Esports
Spoiler Alert is an Opinion culture column used to give reviews for movies, television shows, or other related media.
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